Writing the book changed my perspective on Samuel Adams in one important way. I already knew that he believed government must be rooted in the rule of law and that he acted from a principled desire to defend the people’s basic rights. I also knew that Samuel did not crave money, did not thrust for popularity and despised pomp. But reading all of his writings and assessing his actions gave me a new and deeper appreciation of how Adams’ words and deeds provide a veritable guide to responsible citizenship and public service in a republic. If America’s voters and elected officials strove to meet the standards Samuel Adams enunciated and acted upon, America would benefit mightily.

The book is in stores now, and if you visit the office 331 in the History Department at the right time, you may be able to get your copy signed.

The Fourth of July celebrates American independence, but it’s also 150 years to the day since Abraham Lincoln asked for troops to restore the Union. The North and the South differed over what independence really meant, and they went to war over states’ rights and civil rights, issues that still divide the nation today. Was the Civil War more about slavery or economics? Was it worth what it cost? Could slavery have been ended by peaceful means? Was the war a historic struggle or a tragic mistake? Those questions help demonstrate how the Civil War has defined American culture and politics. We hear from five eminent historians with different points of view.

The full audio of the program can be downloaded here and can also be found on iTunes as a podcast here.

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Dr. Isaac Campos was recently interviewed by the North American Congress on Latin America for his insight into the “forces behind drug prohibition in Mexico.” Dr. Campos notes, “The roots of the War on Drugs go deep in Mexico. In fact, in some ways, they are deeper there than in the United States.” The full interview is available on the NACLA website.

When asked to describe his book, Home Grown: Marijuana and the Origins of Mexico’s War on Drugs, Dr. Campos explains,

My book is a history of marijuana in Mexico from its arrival in the 16th century through its prohibition there in 1920. It demonstrates that Mexico’s War on Drugs was very much a phenomenon of Mexico’s own making. The findings also suggest that Mexico’s experience and approach to marijuana proved critical in the development of that drug’s early history and prohibition in the United States. Home Grown revolves around marijuana’s reputation for producing madness and violence in its users. Marijuana was overwhelmingly associated with those effects from the 1850s through 1920, and that reputation made its prohibition almost an afterthought for Mexican policy makers. Thus the book traces the development of that reputation, in the process demonstrating how Mexican drug law evolved and how Mexico’s War on Drugs was born.

The book argues that marijuana’s nature was key to this process. Marijuana’s effects are highly unpredictable. It’s a drug that can produce anxiety, panic attacks, and even hallucinations at high doses. Like all drugs, however, marijuana’s effects are highly conditioned by the social and cultural “setting” of its use, and the psychological “set” of the users. Simply put, what people think is going to occur when they take a drug is often as important as any other factor in producing a particular effect. In Mexico, a country with the richest collection of hallucinogens on earth and where, since the 16th century, disputes over the use of such substances have been intimately linked to political and spiritual battles for control, it is not so surprising that the use of marijuana would soon be associated with madness and even violence. Indeed, I suggest that within this setting it is plausible that marijuana actually inspired “mad” behavior and violent outbursts, though until now scholars have universally shrugged off reports that marijuana caused such effects, deeming them the product of exaggeration and myth.

The interview is part of a larger discussion about Dr. Campos’ recent article, “In Search of Real Reform: Lessons From Mexico’s Long History of Drug Prohibition” which can be purchased and downloaded here.

At one extreme were the proslavery Ultras, states’ rightists who favored secession. Their man was Claiborne Fox Jackson, a striving former state senator who had beaten the state’s leonine senator, Thomas Hart Benton, the leading opponent of slavery’s extension into the western territories. On the other extreme were “Unconditional Unionists,” largely St. Louis Germans (the state’s only reliable Republicans) who supported the Union regardless of circumstance. Their leader, Frank Blair, a congressman and friend of the president-elect (his brother, Montgomery, would soon sit in Lincoln’s cabinet), marshaled these Germans’ support as the party’s most reliable base. Of the 26,000 votes Lincoln received in all of the slave states, more than 60 percent came from Missouri, nearly all from Germans.